VIDEO: Fracking and Methane: What You Need to Know
Monday May 2, 2016
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is about to finalize regulations on the oil and gas industry to reduce methane emissions. EPA says it wants to regulate methane to mitigate climate change, since methane is a greenhouse gas. But as EID’s new video and infographic show, study after study has found that methane emissions from the entire natural gas system are already very low – well below the threshold at which scientists say natural gas may lose its greenhouse gas advantage. Further, a new study in the journal Science found that oil and gas production is not to blame for the global spike in emissions.
Energy In Depth has done the math and it shows that EPA’s methane regulations will only achieve a reduction in global temperatures of 0.0047 degrees Celsius, or four one-thousandths of one degree, by the year 2100.
Meanwhile, it’s thanks to fracking that the United States is the only country in the world to achieve dramatic reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. As the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) explained in its Fifth Assessment Report,
“[T]he rapid deployment of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal-drilling technologies, which has increased and diversified the gas supply…is an important reason for a reduction of GHG emissions in the United States.”
The Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) has said,View Full Article